Skills Manager (Smart Router)
Purpose
Context-aware routing to skills and hooks management. Helps you troubleshoot, fine-tune, and manage the automated documentation system.
When Auto-Activated
- •Discussing skills activation or hooks
- •Creating new skills
- •Keywords: skill activation, hook, troubleshoot, fine-tune, keyword, skill-rules.json, create skill, new skill, agentskills
- •Debugging why a skill didn't activate or activated incorrectly
🚨 CRITICAL RULES
- •Logs are your friend - Always check
.claude/logs/skill-activations.logfirst - •Test after changes - Always verify modifications to
skill-rules.jsonwork - •Validate JSON - Use
jqto validate skill-rules.json before committing - •Keywords should be specific - Too-broad keywords cause false positives
📋 Quick Diagnostic Workflow
Problem: Skill Didn't Activate
- •
Check logs:
bashtail -20 .claude/logs/skill-activations.log
- •
Check current keywords:
bashcat .claude/hooks/skill-rules.json | jq '.skills."SKILL-NAME".promptTriggers.keywords'
- •
Add missing keyword:
- •Ask Claude: "Add 'KEYWORD' to SKILL-NAME"
- •Or edit
.claude/hooks/skill-rules.jsondirectly
- •
Test:
bashecho '{"prompt":"test prompt"}' | .claude/hooks/skill-activation-prompt.sh
Problem: Skill Activated When Shouldn't
- •
Identify the trigger - Check logs to see which keyword matched
- •
Remove or make more specific:
- •Remove: "Remove 'text' from localization-developer"
- •Make specific: Replace "text" with "localized text"
- •
Verify:
bashtail .claude/logs/skill-activations.log
🎯 Common Tasks
Add a Keyword
Quick: Ask Claude
"Add 'refactoring' to ios-dev-guidelines keywords"
Manual: Edit .claude/hooks/skill-rules.json
"keywords": [ "swift", "refactoring" // ← Add here ]
Remove a Keyword
Quick: Ask Claude
"Remove 'text' from localization-developer, it's too broad"
Manual: Edit and remove from keywords array
Check What Activated
tail -20 .claude/logs/skill-activations.log
Look for:
✓ Matched: skill-name # ← This skill activated No matches found # ← Nothing activated
Test Activation Manually
echo '{"prompt":"add feature flag"}' | .claude/hooks/skill-activation-prompt.sh
Should output skill suggestion if match found.
Auto-Learning Feature
What it does: When a substantial prompt (100+ chars OR 3+ lines) doesn't activate any skills, the system prompts you with available skills and auto-updates keywords based on your feedback.
Workflow:
- •You submit a substantial prompt
- •No skills activate
- •System shows: "Should any of these skills be activated?"
- •You respond: "Yes, localization-developer should activate"
- •Claude extracts keywords from your prompt
- •Claude runs:
.claude/hooks/utils/add-keywords-to-skill.sh localization-developer <keywords> - •skill-rules.json updated
- •Future similar prompts auto-activate
Manual keyword extraction:
# Test keyword extraction echo "Update space settings localization for membership tiers" | .claude/hooks/utils/extract-keywords.sh # Output: membership, settings, localization, tiers, update # Add keywords manually .claude/hooks/utils/add-keywords-to-skill.sh localization-developer "membership" "tiers"
Logs:
- •Missed activations:
.claude/logs/skill-activations-missed.log - •Learning updates:
.claude/logs/skill-learning.log
🔧 The System Components
Hooks (Automation)
Location: .claude/hooks/
What they do:
- •
skill-activation-prompt.sh- Suggests skills based on your prompt - •
post-tool-use-tracker.sh- Tracks file edits - •
swiftformat-post-edit.sh- Auto-formats Swift files immediately after edit - •
notification-alert.sh- Sends macOS notifications when Claude needs input
Skills (Routers)
Location: .claude/skills/*/SKILL.md
The 7 skills:
- •
ios-dev-guidelines- Swift/iOS patterns - •
localization-developer- Localization - •
code-generation-developer- Feature flags, make generate - •
design-system-developer- Icons, typography, colors - •
skills-manager- This skill (meta!) - •
code-review-developer- Code review standards - •
feature-toggle-developer- Feature toggle removal, cleanup detection
Configuration
Location: .claude/hooks/skill-rules.json
What it contains:
- •Keywords for each skill
- •Intent patterns (regex)
- •File path patterns
- •Priority settings
📊 Configuration Structure
{
"skills": {
"skill-name": {
"type": "domain",
"priority": "high", // or "medium", "low"
"description": "Smart router to...",
"promptTriggers": {
"keywords": ["keyword1", "keyword2"],
"intentPatterns": ["(create|add).*?something"]
},
"fileTriggers": {
"pathPatterns": ["**/*.swift"],
"contentPatterns": ["SomePattern"]
}
}
},
"config": {
"maxSkillsPerPrompt": 2,
"logActivations": true
}
}
📝 Creating New Skills (agentskills.io Spec)
Skills must follow the agentskills.io specification.
Required SKILL.md Format
Every skill must start with YAML frontmatter:
--- name: skill-name description: What this skill does and when to use it (max 1024 chars). --- # Skill Title ## Purpose ...
Name Field Rules
- •1-64 characters
- •Lowercase only:
a-z,0-9,- - •No start/end hyphens:
skill-name✅,-skill-❌ - •No consecutive hyphens:
my-skill✅,my--skill❌ - •Must match directory name:
skills/my-skill/SKILL.md→name: my-skill
Description Field
- •1-1024 characters
- •Must describe: What it does AND when to use it
- •Include keywords that help agents identify relevant tasks
Good example:
description: Context-aware routing to the iOS localization system. Use when working with .xcstrings files, Loc constants, or user-facing text.
Optional Frontmatter Fields
--- name: skill-name description: Required description. license: MIT compatibility: Designed for Claude Code metadata: author: anytype version: "1.0" ---
Directory Structure
skill-name/ ├── SKILL.md # Required - main skill file ├── scripts/ # Optional - executable scripts ├── references/ # Optional - additional docs └── assets/ # Optional - templates, images
Quick Checklist for New Skills
- • Directory name matches
namefield - • YAML frontmatter with
nameanddescription - • Name is lowercase with hyphens only
- • Description explains what AND when
- • SKILL.md under 500 lines (use references/ for details)
- • Added to
skill-rules.jsonwith keywords - • Tested activation with sample prompts
⚠️ Common Issues
Hook Not Executing
Symptom: No activation messages, empty logs
Fix:
# Make hooks executable chmod +x .claude/hooks/*.sh # Verify ls -l .claude/hooks/*.sh # Should show rwx
Invalid JSON
Symptom: Hook fails silently
Fix:
# Validate jq . .claude/hooks/skill-rules.json # If error, ask Claude to fix it
Too Many False Positives
Symptom: Skill activates too often
Fix: Make keywords more specific
- •❌ "text" → activates for everything
- •✅ "localized text" → more specific
📚 Complete Documentation
Full Guide: .claude/SKILLS_MANAGEMENT_GUIDE.md
For comprehensive coverage of:
- •Detailed troubleshooting workflows
- •Advanced regex patterns for intent matching
- •Creating new skills from scratch
- •Monitoring and maintenance
- •Log rotation and cleanup
- •Complete skill-rules.json reference
- •Examples for every scenario
✅ Health Check Commands
# Check hook permissions
ls -l .claude/hooks/*.sh
# Validate configuration
jq . .claude/hooks/skill-rules.json
# View recent activations
tail -20 .claude/logs/skill-activations.log
# Count activations by skill
grep "Matched:" .claude/logs/skill-activations.log | sort | uniq -c
# Test specific prompt
echo '{"prompt":"your test"}' | .claude/hooks/skill-activation-prompt.sh
💡 Pro Tips
- •Ask Claude to check logs - "Check the logs for my last prompt"
- •Use logs for tuning - Review regularly to spot patterns
- •Start broad - Add broad keywords, narrow if too many false positives
- •Test everything - Always test after modifying skill-rules.json
- •Document changes - Add comments in skill-rules.json
🔗 Related Docs
- •
.claude/hooks/README.md- Complete hooks documentation - •
.claude/skills/README.md- Skills system overview - •
CLAUDE.md- Main documentation
Navigation: This is a smart router. For deep troubleshooting and management details, always refer to SKILLS_MANAGEMENT_GUIDE.md.
Quick help: Just ask "Check skills system health" or "Why didn't X skill activate?"